Vincent van Gogh's display at Les XX, 1890

Vincent van Gogh's display at Les XX, 1890, in Brussels is an important testament to the recognition he received amongst avant-garde peers during his own lifetime. Participation in the annual exhibition of Les XX was for members and by invitation only. Van Gogh's choice proves that he was going for more than a simple selection of paintings he considered superior, but that he was willing to provide a well reasoned summary of his years of work in Provence. Evidently this notion remained neglected, and even more: it was washed away by the scandal his works provoked. Then the same works were again shown at the annual exhibition of the Artistes Indépendants in Paris which offered space for an expansion of the display: this was done by Theo van Gogh, the brother of Vincent, who was suffering from long lasting mental problems.

In November 1889, Van Gogh selected six of his paintings, all size 30 canvases, to be displayed at Les XX, in 1890. On the back of the letter of invitation from Octave Maus, dated November 15, 1889, there is a pencil sketch that gives some hints for the display Van Gogh proposed, and for its artistic background. His reply to Maus, dated (?) November 20, 1889, supplied the titles later printed in the catalogue, but did not point out the arrangement he intended:

Fortunately, the missing information can easily be compiled from other parts of Van Gogh's correspondence; there is now agreement that Van Gogh's exhibit can be reconstructed in the order of paintings below:

Ivy, the center piece of Van Gogh's arrangement, has been lost without trace since World War II; Hermann Göring is the last person photographed (by Hans Hoffmann) with this canvas while it was stored, together with other works of art confiscated from French Jewish collections, in the Jeu de Paume Galleries. Van Gogh indicated his two Sunflowers (size 30 canvases) were to be displayed either side of Ivy. To the left and right of this upright triptych, he wanted to place the Flowering Orchard and the Wheat Field at Sunrise. Finally, he indicated Red Vineyard was to be hung (at the top or) underneath this arrangement.

The four landscapes depict traditional notions of the four seasons: flowering trees in spring, a shaded hiding place in the midst of ivy in summer, the vineyard harvest in autumn, and new wheat on the furrows in winter. In between the seasons were embedded the heraldic flowers of Provence — sunflowers, dear to the artistic and literary circles of the Félibres, the néo-provencal movement around Frédéric Mistral.

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